Ernst Roets Breaks Away From AfriForum: Why “Replace ANC” Won’t Fix SA (Decentralisation Plan)

Ajouté : 2026-05-18

[00:00:05]Right. If there's one person in this country that gives the the government heartburn, it's my next guest. We know him because he's been occupying a lot of social media space and media space. And the government loves to blame everything on some of the work he's done. And we are going to be in for a treat today talking to Aaron Struttz who's uh change tech a little bit and we're going to get deeply into this. But before we start with today's episode of the state of the nation, welcome. Uh let's uh first talk about our friends here, Pace Car Rental that helped to keep us going.

[00:00:45]They sponsor this episode and they're going to give you a discount on a car hire. So go to pace car rental when you need to rent a car anywhere in South Africa. Use the code sona s o n a and you will get a discount on your next car hire and don't mess around. Hire a bucky. They've got bies and everyone needs a bucky. If you don't have one, you just need one every now and again just to impress your girlfriend. So go and get a bucky from base car rental.

[00:01:12]And then while you're online booking your car, just subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. So, as I said in the introduction, joining me today, Aaron Rutz.

[00:01:21]>> Thank you very much. Good to be here.

[00:01:23]It's good to have this conversation finally.

[00:01:25]>> Now, Arr and I have been chasing each other around and we finally got him here and uh of course um not too many people sort of know the details and we're going to get those details. Aren's roots became synonymous with Afri Forum and uh doing all sorts of tweaking the government's nose and doing things that they don't like like visiting America and all sorts of things. But now you're not with Afro Forum anymore. You're with Lex Libertas.

[00:01:51]>> Yes.

[00:01:52]>> Tell us about that move.

[00:01:53]>> Yeah. So I mean I'm still a member of Afro Fororum. Um I'm just not an employee anymore. Um I used to be I was involved with Afroformum since its very early days. I was involved with Afroform youth. Um I was actually the first youth chairperson of of Afro Fororum and um played different roles at Afroformum and about a year ago we founded a new initiative uh called Lex Libertas which is an independent initiative. It's not part of the solidarity movement of which Afric is part as well but it's friends of the movement you could say. uh and it's a bit differently positioned and the the important thing about Lex Libertas in terms of understanding the nature of the organization is it is a it's a combination of a think tank and an advocacy group. So we focus a lot on research and getting information out there but not just publishing reports like you would see the Heritage Foundation or Kato Institute or these think tanks in America for example but uh combining that with big projects you could say activistic projects. Um and so and then the question is what do we do research about and what is our our sort of goal as a think tank and that is that we believe there are a lot of problems in South Africa that are typically described as you know the crises that we face every day. Our uh diagnosis is that many of these things that we describe as the crisis in South Africa are actually symptoms of a deeper rooted crisis. And this deeper rooted crisis is that the political system is not sustainable. And so we believe the solution is not simply to replace the ANC with another party that would govern more responsibly, but to decentralize the political system.

[00:03:33]And that is what what we are working towards. I suppose to give uh some credence to what you're saying, we're seeing the problem with some of these ministries that are being held for example by the DA where they come running into some of the same problems that ANC ministers >> uh find all the time. We saw the textbook crisis which is textbook case of bad system, isn't it?

[00:03:56]>> Yeah. Yes, of course. and all this the foot and mouth disease crisis and and some of the controversies that that Gayton McKenzie is involved now and so I think it's important for people to understand that simply replacing the ANC would actually solve little of course the ANC has to go uh because it's an inherently corrupt country but many of the real structural problems that we face in South Africa would not go away if the DA were to take over and so our prediction is that if the DA were to govern South Africa it would not be very long before there would be major disillusionment uh with whichever party takes over from the agency and that's partly because in many ways these issues cannot be addressed with the current political system and and what we mean by that is there are some real structural problems in the country. It's firstly it's a very big country. It's also very diverse. Um it's way more diverse than than Europe. Uh but it's almost as big as as Europe or at least as as Western Europe. But then the political system is highly centralized. Despite all these nice things that the constitution says in reality it's a very centralized political system where the country is governed not so much even from the union buildings but from the office of the party that's governing the country in our case Latuli house. And so but on top of that we have this deeply rooted you might say ideology in South Africa that has taken root that the government should care for the people. It's the government's job. The government's job is to create jobs and it's the government job to fix unemployment and all of these things and a lot of people are waiting for the government to do these things but the government can't do it. Um and so we need what needs to happen there. There's no perfect system but what needs to happen we believe is the burden of responsibility should shift from the government that doesn't have the capacity to fulfill these things to the communities where which should at least have the capacity or at least should create the capacity. Some communities are better equipped than others. That is true. But shifting the burden of responsibility from the government to the communities would certainly be a a step in the right direction.

[00:05:59]>> What would that look like? Because I understand the theory, but in actual fact, I'm I'm just trying to think that some of our biggest problems is where governance is decentralized.

[00:06:10]>> Yes.

[00:06:11]>> You know, you're looking at terribly run provinces, worstrun municipalities. And I'm thinking to myself, my lord, if you were to give them any more power, it's bad enough with the little power that they've got. Or do you think more power will fix up local? It's >> and regional government.

[00:06:26]>> Well, the issue is not so much to give incompetent local authorities more power, but to ensure that the central government has less power because the central government is enforcing destructive policies on all these local communities. Uh the bee laws, these the affirmative action laws and so forth.

[00:06:43]And so that's why it's important to state that there's not a quick fix.

[00:06:47]There's not there's not a button that you can push and then the problem is solved. But a decentralized system would certainly lead to to communities that we would be just as bad off as they are now. But it would also provide the opportunity for other communities or other areas to flourish if they have better policies. And so there would be more, you could say competition from a local governance perspective. And but the question you ask is a is a in terms of what would that look like is is a very important question and it's perhaps the most important question that we should answer as a think tank and our current position is that it could take different forms. Um and as opposed to deciding this particular form is the one that we are pursuing. We're in the space now where we are investigating the different forms. And what I mean by that is it could be a canton system to compare to Switzerland. It could be a federal system like the United States.

[00:07:39]It could be a confedereral system. Um, and that would be something comparable to the United States but without the White House. Um, but there are different forms of of what what people call corporate or or functional self-determination, which mean which means not necessarily chopping up the country, but giving communities more authority over their own affairs. And our role now as a think tank we believe is to investigate these different forms of self-governance and to say what do they look like to look at case studies where has it been applied does it work and then to ask the important question can it work for South Africa and we're currently working on a extensive paper on on this issue that we we hope to publish within the next few months.

[00:08:20]Yeah, because the holy grail in South Africa is the constitution, right? And it's like if anybody starts talking about constitution, everybody gets up in a because it was this this great document that was carved out in blood, etc., etc. And and and it's it's been a relatively good constitution, but >> yeah, >> the numbers are telling you a different story. There are problems. Now when it was negotiated I recall that the big fight was that certain stakeholders want wanted greater federalism.

[00:08:52]>> Yes.

[00:08:53]>> And what people forget was that the old South Africa was highly centralized.

[00:08:57]>> Mhm. Exactly.

[00:08:59]>> So this was a big move away from from that. If we think this is centralized that was ridiculous.

[00:09:05]>> Yeah. So, so I think that's an important point because we have this weird dichotomy in South Africa where if you criticize the the ANC government especially from a sort of systemic perspective the accusation is okay so you want apartate so it's as if we have a choice you can either have ANC government or ANC democracy the ANC's version of democracy or apartate and you must choose between the two uh one former judge said it's a choice between an efficient but immoral system as opposed to a moral but inefficient system. And the truth of the matter is that you can reject both those systems and say we want something else. And I think what people underestimate is the similarities between the political system in South Africa currently and the political system before 1994. And some of the similarities are that it is still highly centralized.

[00:09:56]>> It's still dominated by one community or one section of society. It's to a large extent an oligarchy. So it's a small political elite that makes that is largely disconnected from ground level realities but that make decisions that affect everyone and it's highly racialized. It still presides over a vast network of race laws. And so you can reject both those things those those things. And the irony is that rejecting both those things implies rejecting something that is rejecting two ideas that are actually at least in in reality or in practice very similar. Now yes it's true that theoretically there's a lot of great things in the constitution but part of our argument we philosophically we regard ourselves as burkian because the Edund Burke famously said that when you look at political policies or principles the the important thing is to to evaluate these things based on experience over theory. So theoretically something can look incredible but the question is what does experience tell you and and in South Africa that's a perfect case study of the massive gap between theory and experience. The theory is wonderful but experience is something else.

[00:11:02]>> So you still in the pro in the process of thinking this through what it would look like. You haven't got any hard and fast um ideas yet. You know provinces is that a thing or you know we going down to >> Yeah. So, so we published a paper on this last year that we call the reclaiming freedom report and that that paper largely explains why we say the system is structural or the problem is structural and not just policy. So what we say in that paper at least is that the crises in South Africa are typically categorized under three headings. The one is South Africa has a destructive policy framework. The other is that minorities are being persecuted. And then the third is that the government is failing. And we say that these things are actually symptoms of the problem that that I have described and that we need to relook this. And so we're it's sort of a threeparter report series that we're working on. The second one that we're almost finished, we plan on publishing it soon is what we call the persecution report. Um so it's it explains why we say minorities are being persecuted, why we say the South African government is a destructive force currently and it links it back to this structural crisis and then the third part thereof is to to look at more is to be more solutiondriven to say well here are different political systems that might work. So currently the the basic principle is decentralization and the promotion of self-governance and we can say now all right the solution is we need to we need to duplicate the American system for South Africa but there could be other systems that could be better um for example we often look at the Trollians who are part of Italy but they have a large degree of autonomy over their own province they decide how their own tax money is spent and so forth but they're still part of Italy they haven't seceded and so that's something that we believe we should look at we should look at how the Scottish are being treated within the context of the the United Kingdom, the Nunavv in Canada. There are so many examples and so we don't want to rush it to a very particular conclusion before we did the ground work.

[00:13:09]>> Now there's always I mean the birth of South Africa is has been one since the union.

[00:13:14]>> Yes.

[00:13:15]>> Of putting a big blanket over a whole lot of disparate interest groups.

[00:13:20]>> Mhm. and saying if the there's there's so many different people, we put one big blanket over there and everybody's mildly unhappy.

[00:13:30]>> Yes.

[00:13:31]>> But it kind of keeps you together. Yeah.

[00:13:32]>> And it's roughly worked.

[00:13:34]>> Yeah. Well, you it's it's a cost. It's come at a cost, but it's it's it stopped us from civil wars and >> Yeah. So what's what's remarkable about that story is South Africa before 1910 was a collection of various colonies, Bur republics, African kingdoms and different territorial arrangements and then of course after the British won the Anglo the second Anglo Bur war they unified they made basically the borders as we know it today. um that was 1910 and then two years thereafter the ANC was founded >> and if you read the founding documents of the ANC and and the early presidents before Nelson Mandela uh Albert Latuli and so forth they make it very clear that the ANC was founded in response to unionization of South Africa saying that the problem with unionization was that it facilitates a process whereby one group gets all the power and makes laws that are applicable to everyone else which is quite ironic reading president saying that because that's exactly what what they are doing now. And so I I think it's not the problem with these sort of constitutional debates is it's not simply a matter of is the light on or is it off. And people want to see it that way because it's just easier to comprehend to say good or bad, yes or no, or is it going to be peaceful or is it or is it going to be violent? And in reality, it's usually somewhere on a on a sliding scale. And and our argument is that the Union of South Africa under the British was yes it might have prevented civil war but it was not a sustainable system and then the Africanistas took over and it was the apartate system under pretty much the same premises and that was not sustainable either and our argument is that the new post94 dispensation is in many ways a continuation of the broad constitutional idea that drove the British's control over over South Africa then the African partner control and now the ANC control and we believe the re we believe there's a running thread to all of those three uh systems you could say or eras which is it was highly centralized it was racialized and the solution to or the response to that well not only that highly centralized racialized and eventually it failed and it led to disillusionment and our our response to that is decentralization is is whoever is the president should have significantly less authority and government those people who make decisions should be much closer closer to the communities because it's easier to hold someone accountable that lives down the street than it is to hold someone accountable that lives in or works in Latulas.

[00:16:05]>> There are of course a whole lot of potential sort of warning lights that flash, right? Warlordism.

[00:16:11]>> Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Yeah.

[00:16:12]>> Yeah. If we decentralize this and one can only imagine we saw what happened in the '9s in KZN if that now became you know more autonomous more self regulating more self managing what could that look like >> yeah well that's absolutely the case I and that's why it's important to stress that that there's no perfect solution or a silver bullet but the fact of the matter is that South Africa currently suffers from warlordism and it currently suffers from all these crime syndicates, construction mafias and taxi mafias and all these different mafias that in many ways either control the police as we're seeing now revealed in parliament or the or function in the absence of the police where the police either do not have the capacity or the will to intervene. So it's not a question of if we if we decentralize we're going to have warlordism and crime syndicates and mafias as opposed to the current situation because we have these things already. But what we could have through a decentralized system is at least certain areas where wellorganized communities can can fulfill their own functions. And so my friend Aaron Fon who's with a Forum uh always talks about the we talk about the vacuum that has been created by the absence of the South African government or absence of political leaders and leadership and his response to that is that the absence or the void can be filled either by good guys or bad guys. And so I think a realistic a a utopian prospect would be how are we going to ensure that there's no warlords, no crime syndicates, no unemployment. The question if that is is if that is realistic. I think a more realistic prospect is how can we at least ensure that communities that are well organized have the capacity to care for themselves, to do business, to start businesses and to flourish. And I think that even that a decentralized system would still be much better than than the the projection that we see currently.

[00:18:09]>> Now some of the people that aren't in the Ritz fan club.

[00:18:14]>> Yes, >> there are a few.

[00:18:15]>> Yes, I'm aware of that. Yeah, >> you're aware of uh they would be screaming at their devices watching this sort of saying, "Oh, you want to entrench white privilege?"

[00:18:25]>> Yeah, I mean of course they would say that. I think the the problem the underlying issue here is is this this entitlement ideology that has taken root that says that this combination of race, nationalism and socialism that says firstly all poor people are victims, all rich people are perpetrators, but also all black people are victims and all white people are perpetrators. And then they sort of blend the two >> and then the solution to that, the ideology prescribes a solution and that is more state power. The government must control this. Yeah. And so and then they call that black empowerment even though it doesn't empower black people and it only empowers a very small politically connected elite. And so they play this rhetorical game where if you criticize for example black empowerment policies they would say oh so you don't want black people to be empowered.

[00:19:11]>> Um not regarding the fact that the policies are not empowering people. And so it's a sort of a semantic fraud where they they stick these wonderful names onto destructive policies like it's like calling North Korea the the the Democratic Republic of North Korea and then arguing that it's a democracy. And if you say the system has to be changed, they would say, "Well, what are you rejecting democracy?"

[00:19:32]>> Um, and so the fact of the matter is what's currently implemented isn't working. And it's especially not working for black people. just looking at the statistics, unemployment numbers, um poverty numbers, even just from an equality perspective, equality, inequality has actually worsened since the implementation of these policies as a result of this ideology. And so this is once again an example where we say we should be driven more by experience than by theory. So we get confronted with sort of ideological arguments and accusations and I guess that's just something you have to deal with. But in reality, you need to say what is working and what isn't working and let's stop the things that aren't working and let's focus on the things that are working.

[00:20:12]>> Yeah. Now, you see, um I was just wondering while I was listening to you say that if Yeah. I'm a big believer in white privilege. I really really believe that there's white privilege. And I'm not even joking. The white privilege is that we know that there's no one coming to save us.

[00:20:27]>> Oh yes.

[00:20:28]>> And that's a privilege. It's a privileged position to know exactly where on the chessboard you are. Right.

[00:20:34]So, we know that they aren't coming to help us, whoever they are. If it's the government and the lights go out, we know that there's no super technician who's saying, "Damn, I can't believe the lights went out. Let's quickly fix it."

[00:20:50]No, it's not going to happen. So, we start creating alternatives.

[00:20:53]>> Yes. Do it yourself.

[00:20:54]>> Do it yourself. you know, and it's it's kind of ingrained because um you know, it there's a long history of self-sufficiency in that community as opposed to the majority of the country which has got a large dependency on an absent government.

[00:21:10]>> Yes.

[00:21:11]>> Right.

[00:21:11]>> Yes.

[00:21:12]>> Now, if you say to everybody, okay, sink or swim kind of thing, right?

[00:21:18]>> Some people have been swimming already for many, many decades. Other people have been waiting for their uh that that little circle thing. I'm never sure if you meant to put that circle thing over your head or what you but you know like when you're in the water that that little thing that you find on the side of a boat or I'm not sure what are you anyway. Let's just say they they waiting for somebody to come and pick them up in a in a boat. We know that there ain't no boat.

[00:21:45]>> Exactly. And that that's what you get to when your ideology says you're a victim because of something someone else did to you. And it's true that some people are poor because they were they were suppressed or they were they had some fair opportunities that were taken away from them. That is true. And it is also true that some people are wealthy because they are criminals. That is certainly the case.

[00:22:05]>> But to generalize it up to the point where you say if you have something that means you're a perpetrator and if you don't have something that means you're a victim, it's a very very destructive ideology. and and it it links to the point that you make about privilege. Um I also have a particular view on this and that is that it's very sad and unfortunate that the word privilege has become some form of a curse word.

[00:22:26]>> It's become weaponized.

[00:22:27]>> Yes. Because because privilege is supposed to be something that every person should pursue.

[00:22:31]>> Yes. Um, and there's that famous line that I love from the Iliot, uh, where Hector picks up his little boy and he says, "I hope my greatest wish is that for my achievements to be overshadowed by the achievements of my son."

[00:22:45]>> And and what and then what underlyingly what he's saying with that is that he wants to build a life for his son so that his son has certain privileges, so that his son has a stepping stone on which he could perform and excel. And so that should be the pursuit of privilege should be the most important thing people pursue because you want your children to be privileged as a result of the sacrifices that you have made and you want your children then to make sacrifices so that their children can can can inherit that privilege.

[00:23:14]>> But today and I think it's largely because of this this destructive ideology that the term privilege has become a curse word and we're all trying to argue no no I don't have any privilege when what we should be saying is yes I do have privilege and I'm very grateful for that and I'm trying to I I hope that my children will will inherit even more privilege. And if that's the the mode of operation or the type of thinking that everyone has, then society would obviously be better off.

[00:23:37]>> Now, do you not think that uh that what's helping your cause the most is bad government?

[00:23:44]>> Yes. In a in a way, if you look at what we're doing from a sort of SWAT analysis perspective, our biggest so you know what's it strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And then the opportunities and threats are the external factors. And ironically, our biggest opportunity and our biggest threat is the same thing and that is incompetent government. Um, it's a big threat in the sense that that we have these basic services that the government is supposed to be doing for which we are paying taxes but we're not getting it.

[00:24:12]And so, you know, people pay double tax because you pay the government but then you need to pay to do it yourself as well. That's a threat. It's economically a massive threat. But ironically, it's also an opportunity. If your goal is is decentralization, the fact that the government isn't competent shows to people that we need an alternative. So, it's weirdly true that that obviously we don't want an incompetent government, but having one is both an opportunity and a threat.

[00:24:38]>> Yeah, it definitely creates some kind of uh self dependency. Now, what we've got in South Africa now is we've got a a more or less, you know, we we've said it, the bad government is already getting this process started.

[00:24:54]>> Mhm.

[00:24:55]>> Um and you're going to have areas that are going to massively outperform other areas.

[00:25:00]>> Yeah.

[00:25:01]>> You're going to have to deal with instability there.

[00:25:03]>> Yeah. It it will there will be some instability as a result of that, but that is a source of instability all over the world. um the the the I I don't I'm not aware of a realistic way to prevent that from happening. Uh there's it um I often reference a book by Walter Shidell called the great leveler in which he asks he's basic he's a a historical economist you could say or an economic historian and he writes about the history of inequality and the pursuit to eradicate inequality through government intervention. And he looks at all these case studies and eventually finds there's not a single example where it actually worked. And then he says there are a few things that could happen that could really lead to equality of outcome. And one is natural disaster. So everything is destroyed as a result of a huracan and then everyone has nothing.

[00:25:56]>> Another one is is war. It's like a civil war which destroys everything.

[00:26:00]>> Um another one is violent revolution that burns everything down. Um and and then he goes down the list like that.

[00:26:06]But the fact of the matter is all of these methods that has led to to equality were all destructive. None of them were uplifting.

[00:26:16]>> Yeah.

[00:26:16]>> And then even then he says okay so the outcome is equality. Even then >> the con that equality that state of equality is only temporary. Yeah.

[00:26:24]>> And then because it's a natural it's a natural condition of of human life that people have different talents. They make different decisions. Some people will have more than if I've made some different choices in my life I would have had more money. Um, but I choose to do what I currently do, which is which is not as as lucrative as being an advocate or starting a business, but that's my choice. Um, and so I can be angry that a a surgeon has more money than me, but it's also my choice to do what I am doing. But not just is it my choice my choice, I'm working within my particular skill set, my personality, my talents, and so forth. And that's just a fact of life.

[00:27:00]>> Yeah. And and sometimes that very situation leads us down the road that we we're on, isn't it? Where it's Yeah.

[00:27:09]It's just so much easier to fight against something than to fight for something.

[00:27:14]>> Yeah.

[00:27:14]>> And we've had a government that was fighting against a partate and now they they should be fighting for prosperity.

[00:27:21]>> Yeah.

[00:27:22]>> And instead they trying to keep a partate alive even against the diminishing minority. It's kind of crazy that that should be their chosen enemy.

[00:27:32]>> Yeah. And it's you're absolutely right.

[00:27:34]And so also, like you said, it's easier to fight against something than force something because if you if you fight against something, you can just use shotgun tactics and say whatever comes to mind.

[00:27:43]>> And of course, a famous example was the promises that were made by ANC leaders in the '90s that the National Party is corrupt, but you should vote for the ANC because they would not be corrupt. And under the ANC there would be responsible government and there would not be fat cats was the famous promise by Nelson Mandela. It's easy to say these things if you're in opposition. Yeah.

[00:28:04]>> And then when you take power it's not that easy. There's a a a famous um line of the the in America the big fight or debate between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson where Hamilton was more the big government guy and Jefferson was more the small government guy. Jefferson eventually became president and someone asked Hamilton, "Are you not concerned that he's now going to dismantle the government because he's been he's been campaigning for small government all along?" And then Hamilton said, "No, once he tastes the fruit of big government, he's not going to let go."

[00:28:35]And exactly, that's that's the natural thing. It always gets bigger and bigger.

[00:28:38]>> Yeah. Just go ask any DA minister what they feel about blue lights now.

[00:28:43]>> Two years after they said, "We've got to get rid of blue lights." Now they right there in the cavalcade with the best of them.

[00:28:49]>> Yeah. It's exactly to be it's easy to be against it until you taste the fruit of it >> and then it's very difficult to let go.

[00:28:56]>> Now, um let's just change tech here because maybe it plays into it. You you you did get into the naughty corner.

[00:29:04]you've been in that naughty corner a lot. But but uh there was a special sort of uh tag put on your back when you were part of the delegation that went to the US.

[00:29:16]>> Um at that point still very active in Afry Forum. Um, I want to speak to you about our relationship with the rest of the world, especially America, largely because they're such a potentially big trading partner >> and our relationship has been so fracturous.

[00:29:35]>> Um, has anything changed since your visit?

[00:29:38]>> No. Um, well, yes, some things are changing. Let me firstly say this last famous visit by the solidarity movement, if I can mention them by name. Um I wasn't part of that visit but I do regularly go to the United States. In fact I was there just about a month ago and we do speak with people uh especially in Washington DC all over the board people in government think tanks researchers politicians. Um and I've been doing this since 2012 when I was with Africum and I'm still doing this regularly. I we plan on going back to America later this year and some things have indeed changed. Um I remember a few years ago it was very difficult to talk about problems in South Africa because people firstly they didn't want to be seen as criticizing the movement of Nelson Mandela and also because a lot of people believe that South Africa is the model that has to be followed by the rest of the world and so if you say South Africa is not working it sort of disrupts the the international consensus and I think that's one of the reasons why it's so controversial to criticize South Africa on an international stage because there's some ideological consequences to that.

[00:30:45]>> Uh but what has changed firstly over the last few years especially the last eight years or so I could in my international I regularly speak at international conferences and so forth. I could firstly see there was this growing awareness of a problem in South Africa.

[00:31:00]People would say to me they don't know much about South Africa but they know that there are farm murders. They know that they're trying to take the land and they know about Orana. That's sort of what people know >> uh or knew a few years ago. But what's remarkable is how that conversation has shifted to people saying things like we now understand that South Africa should be a sort of a word of warning to the west to the world at large but especially the west that the question is not when is South Africa going to become like us but when are we going to become like South Africa.

[00:31:31]>> Um and what I also saw especially in the last year or so is conversations about what could be done to fix the situation in South Africa. Now we are very hesitant to want other countries to fix South Africa but it is generally a good thing to have more people across the world concerned about the state of affairs and more people asking how can they help and that is something that has definitely changed and I believe it's going to it's going to continue to change. I think we're going to hear see more criticism of the ANC government more concerns expressed about the way minorities are being treated about the consequences of be and so forth. And I think it's going to become more difficult for the ANC government.

[00:32:11]>> Yeah. I suppose uh them be South Africa getting enga being engaged with the rest of the world is a hell of a lot better than people parking aircraft carriers off the coast.

[00:32:21]>> Yes.

[00:32:22]>> Which is another way that uh that you know that that seems to be quite popular at the moment.

[00:32:27]>> Yeah. And I should add that the ANC especially, I think largely as a result of these two things, the the Mandela link and the fact that South Africa was so celebrated in the '90s, they sort of got a free pass for the last three decades. They could do and say whatever they want.

[00:32:43]>> They could kill half a million people in the country through AIDS deniialism and everybody carried on as if nothing happened.

[00:32:49]>> Yes. Exactly. And and many other examples, of course. And you you don't want to criticize that because it's too politically incorrect, but it's almost I always use the metaphor of the pendulum.

[00:32:59]It swung too far to the one side and it sort of stuck there for a while and it was just natural that at some point it's it's going to swing back.

[00:33:06]>> Now, we we mentioned because uh you you you've sort of like um you know there was this connection with America.

[00:33:14]>> Has there been other countries that you've engaged with? Yes, >> because we we tend to sometimes in South Africa, especially on shows like this, >> we we talk so much about the US because we understand the importance of the US, but they're not the only players in the game.

[00:33:29]>> Oh, absolutely. So, so through Lex Libertas just in the last year, we've had engagements of course with the United States, which is by far the most influential. Um, also with with England, the United Kingdom, not so much the the British government, but role players, opposition parties within the UK. um you could say influences in the in the broad sense of the word. Um also the Netherlands I believe is important and should be more important than it is because of the at least the historical link. Um and then also Hungary and the reason why Hungary became significant um is at least under the Orban government and I don't think that's going to change under Peter Ma the new prime minister. Hungary became in a sense you could say some form of a conservative international capital not so much as a result of what the Hungarian government was doing but as a result of international conferences being hosted in Budapestt and so there's the big CPAC Hungary conference that is attended people fly in from all over the world and so opportunities like that these international conferences has become a significant part of what you might call the international conservative movement but also a great networking opportunity for for us.

[00:34:42]>> What about the east?

[00:34:44]>> We we should engage more with the east.

[00:34:47]>> Do you?

[00:34:48]>> No, I've not had real I I've had at some of these conferences I've had engagement but engagements but I've never traveled to Asia to speak to people there. Although of course it's it's worth doing that.

[00:35:00]But I I would say even a bigger priority than the East would be Africa um other African countries, the African Union and so forth. So in terms of my or our list of priorities, I would say engaging with other African countries should be should be the next priority.

[00:35:16]>> Who on the African continent would be worth I mean obviously the the glob answer is everyone but who would it be worth us speaking to in Africa? Um it's I'm not able to give you a very precise answer but I'll give you the best that I can and that is that firstly anyone who's worth speaking to but secondly the goal for us is not so much to speak to whoever is the president or the prime minister um but to speak to especially younger upcoming people upcoming politicians upcoming thought leaders I don't like the term but just just to use it for the for this context um and there are a lot of people who are not necessarily in government who have a lot of influence and so our focus from a sort of policy awareness perspective has not been primarily on lobbying governments as opposed to sort of shaping and influencing international discourse. So there are some great and I think underestimated philosophers in Africa in Kenya and and Tanzania and so forth, Nigeria and I think we should be speaking to those people because often times we see this in America just as an example uh the influence that some big podcasters have over public discourse and public opinion is is immense. It's incredible. And so I would prioritize not so much governments, although that's good if we can do that too, but but people who have significant voices in in these communities.

[00:36:45]>> Now, we've seen a global shift.

[00:36:48]It's it's happening in front of our eyes right now. A shift uh away from call it centrist governments.

[00:36:57]>> Yeah. where you would have had left. You know, it's always easiest when you talk in the context of America or the UK where their system only has a handful of parties.

[00:37:06]>> Mhm. It's devolved in that way where your you republican party was conservative and your labor your democratic party was more for >> you had the same thing in Britain with Labor and Conservatives and those parties sort of drifted to the center and now you're seeing an emergence of parties on either side of them that look radical only because these parties are nowhere near where they started.

[00:37:32]Is the conversation moving away from big government?

[00:37:37]>> Yes, I I think the conversation is moving away from big government, but more than that um I think the broad international consensus is becoming increasingly um unstable. Um there used to be 20 30 years ago sort of broad consensus on international law, the Westfallian system that was of course used to end the 30 years war. the idea that we have different states and this is how states should operate and of course this should be governed through international law with the United Nations as an important role player. But across the board we we are seeing people becoming disillusioned with with the with the United Nations with sort of international power structures you could say where people feel increasingly that it has become captured by either big businesses or very influential wealthy nos and that it has become detached from people's and so and we see that in some ways the ways in which the American government is behaving or has been behaving over the last few months and the fact that they are getting away with it there's clearly a shift where in terms of the authority and and the role that international law plays and it's as if the world is shifting more to towards power politics as opposed to a rules-based system. So that and we can debate whether that's good or bad but then also with sort of a more national context. It's it's very hard to find a country where people are proud of their governments or where people freely associate where people talk about how grateful they are for what their government is doing. And that's what it was supposed to be like.

[00:39:14]It's supposed to be your leader. You should follow your leader. But it's sort of the status quo everywhere you go in the world that people are angry with their governments.

[00:39:21]>> So in your opinion, what are governments getting wrong?

[00:39:25]I I think what what led to this is that governments became largely ideological and maybe this is just human nature. I don't know that people when they get into positions of power they become disconnected from realities on on grassroots level and they start caring for their own interests and then people the people who elected them increasingly feel that they're not really caring for our interests. Um and I think in other words I think what governments all over the world or are getting wrong is the sort of quest towards more centralization and trying to use the government the the mechanisms or the levers of power to solve societal issues because there are actually very few examples of governments using laws and legislation to actually fix grassroots uh issues. Often times those issues have to do with culture. it has to do with work ethic or whatever. Um and and governments tend to work on this default position that the solution to everything is more resources. government must have more money and they must use those resources on big government projects when in reality big government projects tend to fail whether it's in Africa or or in America or in other places and it's sort of a natural thing when you are in control you want more control when what should be happening is people who are in control should say well actually this government that I'm presiding over should have less power but it's it's counterintuitive to take that approach and I think that's why people are losing faith in governments >> yeah and of course for the first time in modern history stretching back, we we can legitimately look at the next generation being worse off than the previous generation.

[00:41:09]>> Yeah, >> that's never been the case in human history. There's always been progress.

[00:41:14]Oddly enough, one of the things people never look at is progress at the time a war starts to when a war ends, you'd think that progress has halted, but in actual fact, progress continues through that period. But now we've got a very real likelihood of the next generation being worse off than their parents.

[00:41:34]>> Yeah. And that's it's very concerning and I would say part of the the explanation there of I would say self-centeredness sort of this new um ideology that everything is about me and freedom is I can do whatever I want to do then I'm free and in as far as I can't do whatever I want to do then I'm not free. And that has never been how people thought of freedom throughout the ages. Freedom has always been about responsibility. It's been about protecting your family, about fulfilling your obligations towards your community.

[00:42:05]And only recently did this view of freedom change towards do whatever you want to do and then you're free. Um or at least to a significant extent. And I think that has led to people use all these terms now like narcissism and all of that. But I think that's largely led to that. And now everything part of I think another part of the explanation is you could say sort of the rise of science uh which science is of course wonderful but that we're trying to find a scientific explanation for everything and I saw if I might quote the comedian Jimmy Carter I saw him recently spoke Jimmy Carr I mean spoke about this recently saying that everything has a term now when someone thinks too much about himself people call it a narcissist when someone is sad people say you're depressed and the solution is always medication and I think in the bigger scheme of things often times our responses to the problem has made it worse as opposed to just letting things develop organically.

[00:42:58]>> Okay. So in closing uh you um have moved on from Afrey Forum to give yourself even more time to think about the South African >> condition.

[00:43:10]Are you more optimistic less optimistic in South Africa than what you have been in your professional career? I I am optimistic but it has to come with some caveats. Um I'm not optimistic that South Africa as we know it is going to survive. What I mean by that is I think there's going to be some significant change in the future. Perhaps sooner than we think. I'm not saying next year or the year thereafter. I'm not exactly sure what the change would look like. It couldn't be much worse because there are a lot of progressives who are calling for the destruction of the constitution because they want to persecute minorities even more aggressively. Um but what we see is that even though the state has become a destructive force, it is also incompetent and so it doesn't have the capacity to enforce these destructive laws to a very large extent.

[00:44:02]Many of these laws are being held intact as a result of the private sphere enthusiastically embracing bee and so forth. I don't think that it's sustainable. I think people are going to there's going to be a growing um resentment of what's happening in the country and I think I think it's going to become I think there's going to be to put it bluntly there's going to be a higher levels of civil disobedience which is not necessarily a bad thing.

[00:44:29]And when I say it's not a bad thing, I think sometimes we've had some examples of that in this country, the ETLs, the CO laws. Sometimes it's necessary for a group of people, a large group of people to say, "This law that you're enforcing upon us is destructive. It's not good for anyone. So, we're not going to follow it." And then I think that would lead us possibly to a better outcome.

[00:44:49]>> Let's hope it's a better outcome because we also saw civil disobedience leading to the 2021 riots, right?

[00:44:56]>> I I think we're going to have both. I think we're going to have more riots and I think if we can if we can move towards decentralization whether because it's formally recognized by the government which is unlikely or whether because it just becomes a de factor reality that people just do it and the government isn't stopping them from taking care of their own affairs. I think you're going to have some areas that are going to have unfortunately mafias and crime syndicates but there will also be some societies and communities where people are better off.

[00:45:24]>> Well, there we have it ladies and gentlemen. South Africa sits in a very very interesting space but it's not just the South African space it's against the global backdrop where there are a lot of strange things going on but an Roots >> thank you very much >> thank you so much it was great speaking to you we uh will do this again >> thank you so much for watching us today remember go hire a car just because you can and uh subscribe to the channel just because you must and we'll see you again on the state of the nation thank you >> thank you very much good to